Northern NonChild
by Clariou
Summary: "Come to me, Kynareth, for without you, I might not know the mysteries of the world, and so blind and in error, I might consume and profane the abundance of your beautiful treasures." - Verse of Kynareth.  Eventual Dragonborn / Brynjolf.
1. Chapter 1

She met blindness when she opened her eyes, until the white faded to blue and wisps of gray. She would have groaned at the cramp on the back of her neck as she dragged her eyes down over the dark pines, but her throat was too dry even with the fresh leafy mint hanging in the air, so the cloud that formed beyond her lips was partnered only with a hoarse breath.

Understanding came slowly, and she winced her eyes closed to pull the memory. The border was supposed to be safe, or so she'd heard from the weary soldiers ahead of her. She was fairly levelheaded in battle, but ambushes were beyond expectation and her bow was hardly effective if she had barely enough time to understand what she need be aimed at.

She could hear the carriage wheels rolling over dirt and rock, and a crow crying out somewhere off behind her.

Beneath prior circumstances, she was Johanna, a Breton living with a Bosmer family of Haven in Valenwood, and had a newly brewed distaste for those named the Thalmor ever since she underwent training in the country's capital. Persecution for the possession of her mother's amulet, that or murder; take your pick. Either seemed the likely scenario considering her wrists were bound so tight she couldn't feel the backs of her hands. Although, she should've been glad. The numbness didn't sting, taking regard to the icy breeze burning into her face and seeping into the thin roughspun cloth of her tunic, chilling straight through her bones.

Her hair was in dire need of washing and what she wouldn't give for some rosemary so she could at least clean her teeth. She still had the lingering taste of raw cabbage mixed with the chapped skin as she moistened her lips with a quick stroke of her tongue - allowing it be noted that she held only partial unanimity with the Green Pact, given her Breton blood.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake," said a man. His accent was thick, Nordic. She remembered it, and she remembered him. He was there when Imperials flooded out of the trees and houses, torches like small beacons of what was about to come as the orange light reflected off their raised swords.

"You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." He was looking at her with those pastel eyes, once fierce, but they then exerted a gentle stare. Ralof, she recalled. His name was Ralof.

"Damn you Stormcloaks. Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could've stolen that horse and be halfway to Hammerfell." Angry fear wrinkled the outspoken man's face as he scorned beside Ralof, and she remembered him, also. He'd been wrestled to the ground at their capture, as she had been, but with much less resistance. "You there. You and me - we shouldn't be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants."

She couldn't be certain of that. She'd murdered her Thalmor escorts without so much as a second thought the moment they ripped the amulet off her neck. With only a shiv and a well placed rune, she staggered two and killed one with the explosion as she cut her wrists free. After she sliced one throat and submerged her shiv fully through the other's, she plucked her mother's amulet from the Altmer Lieutenant and went on her way. So if she'd learned anything of passivity from her training in Haven, none of it had shown then.

She didn't comment, just kept silent and drifted her gaze to the finely-clothed man beside her; his mouth gagged.

"We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief," said Ralof.

"Shut up back there!" she heard from the Imperial driving the carriage.

The thief spoke regardless, "And what's wrong with him, huh?"

Ralof reprimanded him, his tone sparking with respect, "Watch your tongue. You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."

"Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You're the leader of the rebellion. But if they've captured you..." Truth eased into his pause, as gently and coldly as it may, "Oh gods, where are they taking us?"

Johanna didn't know and neither did she want to. Lolling her head back, her sore eyes met a clearer sky, and sunlight speckled her face through the trees. Her first thought was of Haven, but the next, as she glimpsed over the colossal mountains that stood beyond the pines, she caught fractures of High Rock; of her maman and papa, and their warm, quaint cottage by the river.

"I don't know where we're going, but Sovngarde awaits." She didn't know exactly what he meant, but gathering from the founding of this situation his gist was clear.

"No, this can't be happening. This isn't happening."

"Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?" asked Ralof.

The thief took snide, "Why do you care?"

"A Nord's last thoughts should be of home."

"Rorikstead. I'm... I'm from Rorikstead," he stuttered.

"General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!" Instead of following for the speaker, her eyes lowered to her knees. Indeed, her nerves were racking, but to deny death as fate demanded was to deny her place; and when she did not know exactly where that was, she couldn't be certain that refusing that place would be wise.

"Good. Let's get this over with."

Those words seemed to shake the peace from the disquieted thief as they pulled through the gate bridge. "Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me."

"Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves. I bet they had something to do with this," said Ralof.

She ignored the flame that ignited in her blood, as such a flame was just what got her into this mess.

"This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in," he continued, "Funny, when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe."

As the carriage came to a steady halt, everyone was ordered to file off. "Step towards the block when we call your name. One at a time."

"Empire loves their damn lists," she heard Ralof mutter to himself as he stepped down.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," said the man with a ledger and quill in hand, "Jarl of Windhelm."

"It has been an honor, Jarl Ulfric," Ralof said to the silenced man who left their line to join the lot at the block.

"Ralof of Riverwood." He cast her a glance that could have only meant for an acquainted goodbye as he left her side.

"Lokir of Rorikstead."

"No, I'm not a rebel. You can't do this!"

"Halt!" called the captain, presenting no further effort to stop him as he blew past her. She'd half-expected the skitter-hearted man to flee, and she also half-expected his death; however, that did not mean she would be content to witness it.

"You're not gonna kill me!"

"Archers!"

She heard the strings tighten and soon after, followed the fleeting of the arrows. The man had folded over with one through his knee. She even tried to contain her flinch as another pierced through the back of his skull. The cruelty was maddening, and she clenched her tingling fists against the will of her binds.

"Anyone else feel like running?" The captain's voice was caustic and her words seemed to form in more rhetoric than they did a question.

"Wait. You there. Step forward," ordered the soldier.

Each step felt dangerous, like her instinct was telling her not to.

"Who... are you?"

She was to be _executed_ and they had not the slightest clue on who she was? Oh, by the Nine.

"Johanna... from Haven in Valenwood." She spoke as clearly as she could with her parched throat.

"Valenwood?" he commented, "I suppose that doesn't matter now. Captain. What should we do? She's not on the list."

"Forget the list. She goes to the block."

Karma, she thought, was making its rounds. "By your orders, Captain. Follow the Captain, prisoner."

She did, and seemingly not of her own accord. It was out of her own dignity that she could place one foot in front of the other, because what would she be if she was without this ounce of courage to answer for her own actions? Whether they knew what she'd done or not, at the end of the day they were not the ones to judge her character.

As General Tullius began speak, Johanna's gaze drifted off towards the mountains beyond the guard tower. She tried to remember her home, the one through which she first entered this world; though, all she could come to recall was a man she knew only as her father - whose beard smelled of wood and his fingertips of tree sap whenever he held her - and her mother's deep oak eyes with long brown hair braided back. She wished she could remember their voices. She wished she could be back home with them.

The sound of an axe searing through what she could only deduce as lumber pulled her from the reverie. She quickly tore her eyes away from the sight as the man's head rolled into the crate beyond the block, but strangely felt compelled to reset her gaze at the revelation that she would soon share his fate. His detached body tipped over, and it made her shiver aside from the cold.

"You Imperial bastards!"

"Justice!" someone called.

"Death to the Stormcloaks," called another.

Though as unkind the outspoken townspeople were, Ralof's compassion at least remained among them as he commended, "As fearless in death as he was in life."

"Next, the Breton!" An unfolding, she felt, had begun. Of whether it was the beginning of her end or the end of her beginning, she was unsatisfied. This end did not belong.

The call came from the wind, she thought, the affirmation or the declination of her fate in death; but which of those two, she didn't know.

"There it is again. Did you hear that?" A flicker sparked in her chest. Hope or instinct, she couldn't distinguish.

"I said, next prisoner!"

Her faith pushed her forward, and her trust was placed solely in Y'ffre's hands.

She dropped to the caps of her knees, sinking further to humility, and then forward against the damp wood by the press of a hard metal foot.

Her gaze remained steady on the mountains as she could feel a stronger gaze upon her. Could fate deny karma?

Again, she could not answer, but a creature — black as a raven and bigger than any bird she had knowledge of — emerged from what she could only say as destiny itself as it soared the mountainside, that same call reaching out, shaking these men from their casual beheading when its nimble yet heavy form planted firmly on the guard tower. As it remained nestled upon that tower, the smaller bodies gauging its being and its purpose through confusion, it seemingly did the same. However, once those fierce eyes locked with her own, she felt a certainty in her own heart, and she could see that certainty reflecting back at her through this creature.

It called, shaking the air and her bones, before it called again, breaking her perception and unshackling her instinct to stand. She wavered a moment, like a trance had lulled her mind, before Ralof's deep yell reigned her back in.

She followed him to the tower, as if she had another choice.

This was her chance, she thought. A road had been paved to her place; though, which she had yet to see, she would follow it, because fate was calling.

* * *

><p>AN: I was debating Brynjolf or someone for a romance interest, but Brynjolf/Dragonborn stories are beginning to sprout as majority. Ideas?


	2. Chapter 2

She enjoyed the quaint feel of Riverwood. The air was fresh with pine and lumber and the ground was softened with a decent rain after the day of Helgen. Alvor was more than the welcoming she had expected. Wherever she'd traveled, people had been wary of strangers and thereby of her, but Sigrid, his wife, wasn't so much concerned for the physical danger she might pose, compared to the threat she could cause to the woman's marriage, should Johanna have been the type to run off with another's husband.

Luckily for her, Johanna was hardly romantic, let alone conversational.

Alvor gave her permission to use the smith, which she took care as she crafted an iron bodice with the spare ingots he allowed her. She washed her roughspun rags and used them to make padded trousers with the deer hides she collected across the river; and in addition, the iron-plated hide boots she re-crafted with sturdy imperial leather, courtesy of Hadvar.

Dorthe was quite the character while Johanna used the forge, attempting to start up a conversation as the quiet woman tended to her steel on grindstone. "Did you really see a dragon? I bet it must've been huge. Mama says I shouldn't talk to strangers, and you are one but not to Hadvar, so I guess that makes you okay."

She stayed quiet, keeping a firm hand on the hilt of her blade and another at the tip.

"But about the dragon, what color was it? Did it breathe fire? What did it look like?"

She stood from the grindstone and stepped around the child, replacing herself at the workbench.

"You don't talk much, do you?" she deduced.

Johanna offered her a sideward glance and not unkindly, she said, "No."

"Dorthe, leave the woman be. She has things to do," her father said as he approached with firewood stacked in his arms. She almost wished she could stay one more night to fall asleep to it crackling in the fireplace, but as Alvor said, she had things to do and she felt even less inclined to impose. Upon finishing at the workbench, she briskly headed back inside.

"Heading out? Take care on the roads," Hadvar called to her as she gathered up supplies into her knapsack, "And remember to avoid any Legion officers until you get to General Tullius, that is if you decide to join."

She acknowledged his advice with a nod as she hooked her arms through the straps and refitted the buckles. She didn't say anything, but offered a wave as she swung the door open.

"_Remember your manners, Johanna," _murmured a faceless woman within the deep emptiness of the past, where her childhood should have been.

She stopped mid-step before she turned her body halfway and paused. Her head tilted to face him, "Thank you." Her gratitude seemed almost foreign as it left her mouth, though not ungrateful as she noted by his faint smile.

"It was no trouble at all," he said.

The few hours of rest she received, as scarce as they seemed, made her eyes dry as a chilling river breeze eased through her newly cleaned hair. It pried a smile into her lips at the refreshing feel as she hunkered down the steps in her heavy boots. Armed with a steel dagger now cleaned and an apprenticeship in the arcane arts, she headed along the uneven path towards the mountain.

As she reached the road sign, eyeing the pointed labels, she gazed up the unmarked road that she deemed probably led to the barrow Hadvar mentioned. Casting aside the caution quietly settling in the back of her mind, she set her sights on that barrow.

It would remain apparent that wolves plagued every land known to man. She was hardly halfway up the mountain when they made their presence known. From a subtle growl to angry gnashing teeth as they latched onto her palm, she never had less than the word of hatred for the blasted mongrels.

Sending its ravenous cavern of a mouth aflame with the hand ensnared between its jaws seemed inadequate, so she cleaved her dagger down its ribs where it whimpered to a timely death and the given moment was time aplenty to launch a bolt of electricity forth from her fingertips and into the other wolf that had hung back at her flank.

She took little time in assessing her scorched hand, because the flesh-wound had already been burnt closed. So she gingerly placed her opposite hand over it and focused a rejuvenation spell to harden the tender skin, where she then proceeded.

Her discomfort in the weather of Skyrim had reached its peak when she mounted the final step and laid gaze on the barrow's exterior. The snow was picking up in celerity and she doubted the armed men currently scouting about the ruin would give her an appropriate welcome, so she slipped by them without the slightest desire of engagement or the freezing wind.

It was hardly any warmer inside, and the light was dim at best. A man and a woman, she could deem, stood above a makeshift fire across the entrance hall. He on the left and she to his right remained unaware as they guarded her gate to curiosity: a large and dark archway perhaps leading to another chamber.

She approached slowly as she compressed a small ball of flame behind her back, her dagger in the other. Chatting quietly, not disturbing to the heavy dust that seemed to hold the silence in place, their positions were static and she was clear to advance.

She carefully stepped over the common-clothed corpse, its stench repelling a pause of examination as she assumed it to be a former hostage.

Once she was within range, she kept in low profile until she rammed her blade into the side of the man's neck, shoving him to the ground in her motion to yank out her knife.

The woman opened her mouth to shout, but Johanna clamped her hand down over her open lips and released the firebolt. She fell to her knees with her hands clutching her neck, and Johanna - unwilling to let her die down in suffering - plunged her blade into the bandit's heart.

As she glanced down at them, she almost felt sorry, but tossed the thought aside. They could have chosen a different way of life. If it were just larceny then maybe she could've had some pity, but murder granted them no mercy.

There was a locked chest, which thankfully didn't take long to crack. She popped the lid open and filtered through it, stuffing the few gemstones and gold pieces into the satchel on her hip.

"Y'ffre be praised, " she sighed in relief when she noticed the bow and quiver of arrows by the fire. This dungeon dive was about to go much more quickly.

That aforementioned "other chamber" had actually led to the burial crypt. Dragons, wolves, bandits, skeevers, and now undead. Skyrim was quickly turning into the worst place she'd ever been to. Regardless, she lured the lot of the undead creatures with a rune as it slapped into place on the ground, and the shadows held her accommodatingly as she picked them off with her bow.

Her fine-tuned perception had not entirely been focused on the walking dead. No, this place had also provided traps. From spiked doors to poisoned needles, whatever this crypt had stored away and put forth all of its remaining power to keep her from had better be worth her final poultice.

She never had the knack for swordsmanship, but she could proudly say she knew how to dig an eye out with a dagger. Her bow lay across the room at the foot of a peculiar wall that seemed to crackle like fire whenever she drew near, and she had managed to hold her ground through a matter of speaking in consideration of her opponent's greatsword and her own nimble feet.

Luckily for her, her magicka had not been entirely depleted and dodging this rotten-fleshed beast was hardly the challenge. Before it had the time to throw her into the cold wall with its voice, she tossed a rune at her heels, pried a ward up between her and the fiend, and sped off towards her bow. A few flecks of the blast caught her where the ward was weakest and for a moment she wondered whether she'd been struck down, because the room in front of her had grown black.

The sensation was similar to drinking a hefty magicka potion, dizzying but exhilarating; though, this was slightly different. Her lack of magicka remained present due to the surging ache at her temples, but a knowledge had been imprinted within her own mind. She could not access the meaning of the symbols that had settled in dormancy upon her knowledge and it wasn't frightening, because it felt so natural.

Light returned to the room, and she glanced around warily.

"Huh." She disregarded the previous moment when her eyes met the small red bottle sitting on a shelf by the opened casket. She swished it around with her tongue before she swallowed completely and headed for the stairs. Her knapsack had grown heavy in weight and she had loot to sell.

Whiterun awaited.

* * *

><p>AN: Brynjolf it is, and do note that it will all be eventual because I am a notorious procrastinator. But completely off topic, fanfiction keeps removing my hyphen between Non and Child in the title, so I apologize for its oddity. Anyways, constructive criticism is much appreciated!


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